


if he does, he'll

by 21hax



Series: if he does, he'll [1]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: (it's not cutting), Bipolar Disorder, Character Study, Mentions of self-harm, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-13 00:39:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2130522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/21hax/pseuds/21hax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's so frustrating, Mickey can barely breathe. It's suffocating. He's not even the one who's bipolar, and he feels like he's drowning. He never even considered mental health as something he'd been taking for granted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if he does, he'll

When Mickey gets home he breezes straight past Svetlana and Yevgeny and into his room where Ian's still lying on the bed, blankets drawn around his shoulders, facing away from him.

Mickey heaves a sigh and takes off his shirt, tossing it to a corner of the floor. He sits on the edge of the bed and turns towards Ian, putting a hand on his thigh gently. He notices the plate on the nightstand where he left a sandwich for Ian earlier is now empty, and it makes the corner of his mouth twitch up.

"Hey man, you, uh...can I sleep with you tonight?"

Ian draws the covers tighter around his shoulders.

"Shit, wait," Mickey takes his hand off Ian's leg. "I don't mean like 'fuck you' sleep with you, I just mean 'sleep here' sleep with you. 'Cause I mean, I'll fuck right off if you don't want me here. But if it's okay with you, I wanna be like, close to you or some shit."

Ian doesn't budge. Mickey chews on his bottom lip in frustration, not knowing what to do and just wanting to do whatever's best for Ian. He supposes at least this is a step up from the usual "go away" that he mutters at anyone who comes near him.

"I'm just gonna..." Mickey pulls back the covers on his side. "You tell me if you want me to leave, all right?"

Mickey gets into bed next to him, taking care not to touch him. He feels like if he does, he'll break him. He has no fucking clue how to act around him anymore.

: :

One day he comes home and sees Ian sitting at the foot of the bed. Mickey's face breaks into a smile — this is the first time he's seen Ian sit up of his own volition in god knows how long. Then he realizes the top drawer of his dresser is open and Ian's got his fingers threaded through a pair of brass knuckles and wrapped awkwardly around the grip of a hand gun. He's holding it up, just staring at it blankly.

"Shit! Fuck!" Mickey rushes to his side and grabs his wrist, before carefully prying the gun out of his hand. He puts the gun back in the drawer, then kneels in front of Ian and slowly pulls the brass knuckles off and tosses them on the floor. He notices black and blue bruises starting to blossom all over his inner thigh where it looks like he probably hit himself with the knuckles. Mickey looks up at Ian from where he remains kneeling between Ian's legs, and brings his hands up to grab either side of Ian's head.

"Lookit me," Mickey demands quietly. Ian keeps his eyes trained on the floor. It takes all of Mickey's self control not to yell at him. "Look at me."

Ian drags his eyes up to meet Mickey's with great effort and it feels like a miracle. Mickey looks at him in wonderment for a moment, before Ian's gaze trails off to the side.

"Listen, I know you're in there. You can't pull shit like this. You've got a whole family with a fuckton of siblings who love the shit out of you. You can't give up on them, okay?"

Ian doesn't say anything. Mickey doesn't know what the fuck else to say, because he's not going to say "you can't give up on _me_ ", so he just stands up and picks up the brass knuckles he tossed away. He grabs a pillow off the bed and pulls off the pillow case and shoves the knuckles into it. He goes to his drawer with all his guns and other shit and throws it all in the pillow case. He raids the rest of his room and then the entire fucking house for anything dangerous — guns, knives, bottles of various pills and even lighters. By the time he's done rounding everything up, the case is more than half full, with just enough room to twist the opening closed several times. He stashes it in Mandy's closet, under a pile of blankets. He'll tell her about it later, and probably make sure he moves it around every once in a while.

: :

Mickey gets Fiona and Debbie to come over to try and talk to Ian alone. He figures they need to know what happened, and maybe they can work some special Gallagher shit on him that Mickey just can't do.

While they're in his room, Mickey sits at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal in front of him that he eats listlessly. Svetlana sits across from him with Yevgeny in her arms, feeding him with a bottle.

"What is wrong with orange boy?" Svetlana asks, not looking up from Yevgeny.

An irrational amount of irritation flares in Mickey. "His fuckin' name is Ian, all right? If I gotta put up with having a fuckin' kid named Yevgeny, the least you can do is remember my fuckin' boyfriend's name. I'm the only one allowed to give him shit for being a ginger, you got that?"

Svetlana shrugs.

Mickey sighs. "We dunno what's wrong with him. He might be bipolar like his ma but we can't get him looked at in case they cart him off to some loony bin. So we're just...riding it out and hoping for the best."

"He need pills? I can get pills," Svetlana offers.

"I don't fuckin' know," Mickey says in frustration. "I don't even know what the fuck bipolar is! Fuck if I know how to treat it."

He gets up and grabs a beer from the fridge. He opens the bottle on the side of the kitchen table and chugs half of it in one go.

"I know many people. You telling me if Ian need pills, yes?" Svetlana finally looks up at Mickey. It's got to be the first time she's called Ian by his name, and her offer seems to really come from a well-intentioned place, even though Mickey thinks it should be pretty damn obvious he's fully capable of getting his hands on pills himself.

Mickey raises his eyebrows and huffs out a surprised laugh. "Yeah. I'll let you know."

He walks into the family room, taking another chug of beer, when Svetlana calls after him, "Clean your dish, rainbow boy!"

"Jesus Christ, you're already nagging me to clean. Aren't we supposed to still be in our honeymoon phase?" Mickey says with no real malice, but making no move to come back into the kitchen.

"Dish!" Svetlana shouts.

"All right, all right, you fuckin' scissor sister," Mickey gulps down the rest of his beer and tosses it at the trash can about ten feet away, only barely making it. He grabs his cereal bowl and, since he might as well, the other abandoned dishes strewn on the table, and dumps them all in the sink. As Svetlana starts cooing at Yevgeny in Russian, Mickey rinses all the crap off the dishes.

"You better remember to teach that kid some fuckin' English," Mickey says as he's cleaning.

"You are English boy, you do it!" Svetlana immediately snaps back.

"I'm not some English pussy, I'm a fuckin' American!"

Svetlana starts yelling in Russian and Mickey yells back in English, then in a fake bastardization of Russian, then back to English again before he hears Fiona shout his name from behind him.

"Oh, shit, what's wrong?" Mickey asks, immediately switching from anger to concern. He turns off the water in the sink and grabs a kitchen towel off the counter to dry his hands.

"Nothing more than usual," Fiona says with a tight smile. "At least he doesn't tell us to go away anymore."

"Yeah, he stopped telling me that a while ago, too," Mickey says, tossing the towel aside and running his hands through his hair. "But now he don't say nothin' so I dunno if that's better or worse."

"Yeah," Fiona says with a sigh, wrapping her arms around herself and looking away.

"Look, someone's gotta keep an eye on him at all times from now on, all right?" Mickey urges, looking over Fiona's shoulder through the open bedroom door, where he sees Debbie still sitting on the bed with Ian. "We can't have another scare like that. Me and wifey got jobs and shit to do, we can't always be here. There's like a hundred of you Gallaghers, you guys gotta pitch in."

Fiona sighs. "I really don't know if this is the best environment for him. If he's trying to hurt himself, he should really—"

"No! Look, I locked up all the dangerous shit! The only thing he can hurt himself with now is a fuckin' blanket. He needs _us_ , he needs people who don't shit out on him the instant things get rough."

Fiona doesn't look convinced, but in the end they start figuring out a schedule so someone can always be in the house with Ian.

: :

It's so fucking frustrating, Mickey can barely breathe. It's suffocating. He's not even the one who's fucking bipolar, and he feels like he's drowning. He never even considered mental health as something he'd been taking for granted. Sure, he's fucked up, and he's been depressed as shit, but Ian's cooped up in a dark room, stuck under the covers and completely miserable, and there's absolutely nothing Mickey can do to fix it and it's not fair. It's just not fucking fair.

On the way home from the Alibi, he ducks into an alleyway as he starts to feel hopelessness overwhelm him.

"Fuck!" he shouts, kicking at a green dumpster next to him, hurting his foot in the process. There's cardboard boxes piled up next to the dumpster and he shoves them over with all his strength, sending them flying. He spots a metal pipe on the floor, tucked up in the corner where the wall meets the floor. He grabs it with both hands and slams it against the dumpster like a baseball bat, over and over again, until there's a deep dent in the corner of it.

Mickey steps back and looks around wildly. The end alleyway opens out into the street, and he looks out and spots a car parked there against the sidewalk. He starts rushing towards it, wanting to either smash it up or steal it or both, when suddenly he feels arms wrap around his waist from behind.

"What're you doing?!" someone yells into his ear.

Mickey struggles violently out of their grip then turns around to face them. "What the _fuck_ do you want?!" he shouts, but halfway through saying it, his voice softens infinitesimally when he sees that it's Kev.

"You tryin'a land your ass back in jail?!" Kev demands. "If you do that, who the fuck's gonna take care of Ian and Yevgeny, huh?!"

"Oh, those fuckers have a whole goddamn village of idiots fawning over them every second of the day!"

"Drop the _act_ , already, Mickey! Don't do something stupid that you'll regret for the rest of your life!"

"Like I don't already have a fuckin' laundry list of _those_!" Mickey shouts so hard, he feels the pressure of it in his face and chest. "Fuck!" he screams one last time, before turning away from Kev and pacing around the alley. He hocks up some phlegm forming in his throat and spits it on the ground.

"Jesus, Mickey," Kev says quietly. "Are you gonna be okay?"

"Am I—" Mickey stops and looks at Kev, and he laughs mirthlessly. "Am I gonna be _okay_? I dunno, Kevvy-boy, you tell me — I, uh, I knocked up some Russian whore — who, by the way, I only fucked 'cause my wonderful father-of-the-year hired her to fuck the faggot outta me, in front of Ian after he caught _us_ fuckin' — and, heh, funny story: once I finally come outta the fuckin' closet as this giant homo-queer and show my boyfriend, the love of my fuckin' life, how much he means to me and we're ready to ride off into the fuckin' sunset, he has to go and get all moody like a little bitch and I _can't fix it!_ "

At this, he throws the metal pipe back down on the floor with much more force than necessary, then presses the heels of his palms into his eyes as the pipe clatters and rolls away.

"Mickey," Kev says quietly, putting a hand on his shoulder. Mickey immediately shoves it off with a flick of his arm, and takes a few steps backwards. He shakes his head back and forth a small fraction each way, over and over, looking anywhere but Kev. He turns around and walks away without another word.

Deep down, he knows Kev is right. He can't do anything stupid that would take him away from Ian. Not only does he need to be there for Ian's sake, but it'd drive him fucking nuts to get stuck in jail and not be able to check up on how Ian's doing every day.

So he ignores the violent rage inside himself and goes home.

When he gets home, he slams the door behind him, then realizes he hears Yevgeny crying loudly. "Shit," he curses quietly as he walks further into the house.

"Hey, carpet muncher!" he calls, looking for any sign of Svetlana or Yevgeny. The family room is empty. "Shut that fuckin' baby up!"

The kitchen's empty, too. "The fuck is that whore even good for?" he mutters to himself.

The door to his bedroom is open, and he can see the curtains are wide open and letting in some natural light. Ian's standing in the middle of the room with Yevgeny cradled in his arms, gently bouncing him up and down and speaking to him quietly. Mickey watches in awe as Yevgeny's cries slowly quieten.

Mickey creeps into the room until Ian looks up at him. He gives Mickey a small, sheepish smile. It's the most reactive he's been since his downswing started.

Ian looks back down at Yevgeny and wiggles a finger in front of him, until Yevgeny grabs it with his tiny little hand. Ian beams.

"Where's, uh..." Mickey starts to ask awkwardly, his voice a low rumble. He feels like one wrong move might spook him off. "Where's the wife?"

"She had to run to the store to get more diapers. She told me not to move or she'd chop my dick off. But Yevgeny was in his little cradle thing in the kitchen and he started crying, so I..." he trails off and looks back down at Yevgeny.

Mickey decides now isn't the time to get mad about Svetlana leaving Ian on his own. Instead he just lets himself feel relief at hearing Ian actually string several sentences together. He steps closer until he's by Ian's side, and Ian passes Yevgeny over to him. Mickey swallows down the emotion rising in his throat and looks down at his son, suddenly feeling a powerful burst of hope for the future clench around his heart, stronger than he can ever remember feeling in his entire life.


End file.
